You’d reap the benefits of being pubicly wrong

Bad typo.

By the way - did I mention that inventing the word "hammertime" was epic, and that now you might just as well retire because there's no way to compete against your former glory.

My pet rabbit's bed was positioned under my work desk at home, making sitting there uncomfortable at best and hazardous at worst, so I often would choose uncomfortable positions around the house that weren't conducive to a productive mental state. Moving his bed under a different table (they prefer to have coverings) means I have a work desk again!

I have no idea what's going on with aversion factoring. I think there's something else you need first, without which it will never really work.

Here's my story: I spent most of the last 5 years averse to a whole bunch of shit, mostly revolving around either thinking or exposing myself to rejection from other humans (this included, as a special case, doing aversion factoring to myself). After doing a bunch of work on personal growth over the last year, which helped but did not solve the problem, most of my aversions suddenly disappeared in December when I switched to a ketogenic diet, then came back later in the winter (I think because I gave myself an electrolyte deficiency). For the last week or so I have been doing a whole bunch of shit spurred by the last CFAR workshop, including but not limited to drinking copious quantities of pedialyte, and my aversions are gone again.

(Here is a rough and ready model of what I think is happening: I think there were various senses in which I was constantly sick for most of the last 5 years, and mostly what my body wanted to do was conserve resources and wait for me to heal. So I was averse to anything that seemed like it wouldn't help with this, until I became sufficiently less sick.)

My job involves sometimes dealing with information that can't necessarily be shared with everyone at the company. I have an official mentor, who's a senior employee who used to work in my group and is now in another. I put off setting up a mentorship meeting for months because I was working on a project and didn't know whether I could talk about it with him. All I needed to do was send my manager a quick email to check, but I just kept putting it off. 

On the flip side, I've had instances where adding a trivial inconvenience has been key to breaking a bad habit. For example, in college I was on the top bunk of a bunkbed for two years, Those years, I'd put my alarm clock down off the bed so that I'd have to get out of bed to turn off the alarm, at which point I'd never be tempted to snooze it and go back to sleep.

The tedx video lost me at the "just get over it" step, which at first glance looked extremely unhelpful. Looking at the CFAR handbook helped it make sense: Ideally at that point the things you're getting over are small, concrete, and approachable.

For minor inconveniences having drastic outcomes, I didn't get a significant haircut for years because I didn't want to hear a day of "oh you got a haircut" comments.

Share a trivial inconvenience that might have dramatic consequences

• I didn't have my band's email logged in on my phone so I never checked it. I missed a few important emails/opportunities.

I have an important "ugh" task I have to do by early next week, so I picked that as one of my things to try this on. I felt like I needed more time, so I changed my rules slightly: I listed aversions for 5 minutes each, then spent 10 minutes working on the sub-aversions for each. I haven't finished yet. 

This sets off a small alarm bell in my head - I might be spending more time on the exercise as a way to avoid actually doing the things. Regardless, I'm going to try to finish this exercise today even if it takes a little longer than expected. 

I feel like this is a powerful exercise. I need to practice it a few more times to find ways to tailor it more to me.

Also, I'm a bit fuzzy on when to say I don't endorse something. Is the heuristic something like "when the best way to solve the sub-aversion is to just find a way to (emotionally) get over it?"

One rather trivial inconvenience that negatively impacts my life is having a great aversion to lack of clarity in any kind of workflow. I've been meaning to join a boat trip with my girlfriend on a nearby river for a while (the kind in a big boat where you just join 50ish other random people and tour around for an hour looking at things), but from the website it's really unclear what exactly I need to do. When to be where exactly, how and where to get the actual tickets and that stuff. So I've procrastinated that endlessly.

This isn’t a trivial inconvenience, but more of an actual aversion: I’m fairly new to a martial art, and there’s sparring every week. I often don’t feel like going because there’s another guy there (military, judo, etc) who usually beats me pretty soundly. I usually have no problem "learning how to lose", but in this setting, it really bothers my ego and self-image as the top of my belt rank (he’s one above me). I know it’s silly, that not going is a strictly worse strategy for actually improving and learning to fight, but that’s how my aversion works.

I don’t see how I can CoZE this (but this would be my first time trying to use it, so perhaps I missed something): I’m either fighting the dude (and probably losing), or not. I could space it out, go every once in a while, but that doesn’t seem any better.

My reasons for doing the martial art are to stay in shape and to make friends; I’ve succeeded on both counts. I could beat this guy if I poured tons of time in, but I have more important ways to use my time. I just don’t like having this feeling each week.

I think that the underlying principles here are very powerful: 1. acknowledging "trivial" inconveniences (i.e. being explicit and honest with yourself) and 2. seeing all problems as groups of sub-problems, each of which can be solved much more easily than the entire thing.